Farmers worry train spill ruined way of life
ENON VALLEY, Pa. — Even with the trees still barren, Pam Mibuck could picture how the seasons would unfold on the land her uncle bought decades ago: a field of sunflowers in the summer, fresh apples for the horses and pie in the fall and a tranquil place for her sons to come home to no matter the time of year.
But when officials decided two weeks ago to burn off the toxic chemical cargo of a derailed freight train a few miles away, sending a huge plume of smoke to blanket her farm and many others along the Ohio-Pennsylvania border, the sense of safety Mibuck had long felt there was upended.
After the chemicals were released, Tina, the amiable white turkey that she bought less than a year ago for $3, was put on antibiotics for respiratory problems, and her chickens laid eggs with an unsettling purple hue, Mibuck said. Her son in California is urging her to move away, offering to build a barn on his land for her two horses, Samuel and Razor. And Mibuck, 54, who works as a custodian at a university, is seriously thinking about leaving the 14 acres that she considers a slice of heaven.
“I don’t want to give up; I don’t want to walk away,” she said recently, keeping an eye on a nearby bubbling vat of maple sap in her yard. But as she ran through the questions she had about planting a garden, eating the fruit from her trees and letting her horses drink from the nearby creek in the wake of the chemical burn, Mibuck conceded: “I don’t feel completely safe doing that. I hate that.”
When the Norfolk Southern freight train careened off the tracks this month and left a fiery heap of wreckage on the outskirts of East Palestine, Ohio, a town of roughly 4,700 people, it upended an area where generations of families could afford to buy acres of land, raise horses and plant gardens, hunt deer and birds and build lives undisturbed by the chaos of bigger cities nearby. Although farming provides only a small number of jobs in the immediate area, many residents say raising livestock and working the land are profoundly important to their way of life.
Through a long global pandemic, national political tensions and the stress of inflation, the land, the water and the fresh air had been a source of comfort and safety. But the chemical threat spreading through the region has shattered many landowners’ confidence.
Despite the federal response to the spill, even the farmers determined to weather the unknown remain fearful about whether their customers will continue to trust their product.
Such is the case at Sutherin Greenhouse, first built near the outer limits of East Palestine in 1947 to sell geraniums and recently purchased by Dianna and Don Elzer.
“No one wants to come here,” Don Elzer, 67, said, adding he was debating what changes to make to the couple’s stock in anticipation of long-term environmental changes. “There’s no way to counterattack the publicity and perception.”
Dianna Elzer, 55, while showing off the fledgling fiddle leaf fig and monstera plants that had just arrived, echoed her husband’s concerns. “We’re fighting against the perception,” she said, “and 10 years from now, that perception might be true.”
Some business owners and farms have started circulating a rallying cry: “East Palestine: The greatest comeback the world has ever seen.” Perhaps, they have hoped, the national attention to the town’s plight could jump-start economic investment, bringing a glimmer of hope from what has been an overwhelming tragedy.
But it is hard to imagine that happening without the residents, and the broader region, trusting that their land and water are safe. For now, that hope of trust has vanished in the haze of unanswered questions, nagging medical symptoms and fear of the unknown.